Upon returning from a recent vacation and hearing a pretzel taste test had taken place in his absence, Daniel pinged me to ask: “Were the results messy? I’d guess they would be.” It took me a beat to realize that he wasn’t talking about, like, a fun-filled day in a crumb-strewn kitchen requiring a thorough sweeping. Instead, he was suggesting that most pretzels taste more or less the same most of the time and therefore our taste test results should not be conclusive.
But are all pretzels created equal? Or are pretzels nuanced snowflakes with a range of textures, flavors, and levels of salt and alkalinity? To arrive at an answer, the SE team pulled together seven brands of good, old-fashioned snacky pretzels you’re likely to find in your local supermarket, and methodically, empirically, scientifically! tasted its way through them all in a quest to identify the very best.
Serious Eats / Amanda Suarez
There was a clear winner! There was a clear—well, we don’t do “losers.” But there were ones that were very clearly not the winner(s)! And then there were a bunch of very enjoyable pretzels right in the middle, ones we’d mindlessly eat without a second thought if we weren’t very deliberately scrutinizing them in a taste test.
Anyway! It was a productive exercise. Now we can all make informed pretzel-buying decisions together. Shall we?
Ed. Note: We wanted to try Herr’s and Uncle Jerry’s pretzels to no avail. I am begging you, once again, to understand that we do not have a West Coast correspondent (or an excited editorial assistant) to help us procure these things!! But we do truly love the feedback. Keep it coming!! Xx.
The Contenders
- Bachman Thin’n Right Pretzels
- Brad’s Organic Mini Pretzels
- Rold Gold Tiny Twists
- Snack Factory Pretzel Chips
- Snyder’s of Hanover Mini Pretzels
- Utz Classic Thins
- Wegman’s Mini Pretzels
The Criteria
A good pretzel is a thing of subtlety and refinement. It is salty, for sure, but it is also lightly sweet—not sweet like dessert, but sweet in the way sandwich bread grows sweet the longer you chew it. Often, the sweetness has a hint of malt to it. (In a sneak-peak of our results, we can now say with confidence that a pretzel that’s salty and malty is, in fact, better than one that’s merely salty and sweet.) That said, salty and malty should never become “salty and toasty,” which quickly devolves into, “Oh god, was there a fire at the pretzel factory??”
The salt should be present as small crystals atop the pretzel in an even distribution, but it should also very distinctly be coming from the pretzel dough. It can be a plus if a pretzel tastes subtly of butter, but never so much that you know in your heart that butter is artificial.
And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that a good pretzel should have a deeply burnished brown exterior courtesy of a dip in an alkaline lye bath before baking. This is not only for looks; it’s this alkaline surface treatment that is responsible for a pretzel’s signature roasty, toast, weirdly pleasantly soapy flavor. (Science time: The strong alkaline bath speeds the Maillard reaction during baking, which is the reaction that drives the browning of bread crusts, seared steaks, and roasted vegetables, leading to such a well-developed and flavorful exterior despite a skinny little pretzel’s relatively short cooking time.)
Size also factored into people’s preferences in that anything that took more than two bites to fully consume ended up at the bottom of these rankings. This could be because most tasters prefer a smaller pretzel’s higher ratio of alkaline surface area to malty-sweet interior. Or it could be because smaller pretzels are thinner, leading to a crispier bite that doesn’t wade into the crunchy-tough zone. Or maybe folks just like popping handfuls in their mouths all at once without discomfort, because isn’t that what snacking is all about?
In the end, it was a nice and salty day. Not our saltiest, for sure, but pleasantly and professionally salty all the same.
The Rankings
Bachman Thin’n Right Pretzels, 4.125/5
Mentions of the word “classic” abounded here. Did we get so far as to pull a “this is what I think of when I think of what a [pretzel] tastes like” from Genevieve? No, but she did write “Wow!” twice, once in reference to external salt levels and another praising the pretzels’ overall sturdiness. It was a little sweet! A little buttery! A little alkaline! And each pretzel was very easy to eat in 1.5-2 bites.
Rold Gold Tiny Twists, 3.79/5
OK, I wrote too soon. This is where Genevieve wrote: “This tastes like lye. It tastes like pretzels!” (She did then ask: “Is this Snyder’s?” which…more on that soon.) Everyone agreed there was a good amount of salt, as well as a gently buttery, toasty finish. The crunch was good, the salt was well-distributed—it was a party!
These were only knocked from top seeding because they weren’t not dry. Taste test guest star/Serious Eats product lead Alison wrote: “These have a nice glaze, but they take a while to chew. I just need water to help things along, that’s all!” (We did not go into this test expecting dryness to be a differentiating factor among pretzels—aren’t all snack-bag pretzels equally dry, and isn’t that a good thing?—but something about the texture of some pretzels made them seem more dry to our tasting panel than others in a way that wasn’t perceived as totally pleasant. This is a good moment to remind readers that each taster goes through the samples in a randomized order, so the issue is probably not anything as simple as, “all pretzels seem too dry after the first few bites.”)
Snyder’s of Hanover Mini Pretzels, 3/5
Snyder’s tasted and smelled distinctly bready, as though soft pretzels were in our future. They weren’t, and that was sad, but the rest of this pretzel-eating experience was so nice! Allison didn’t need water to push through, Kelli appreciated the snap and subsequent chew, and Genevieve again enjoyed the crunch. That said, we all found ourselves craving salt after this sample, which, in a pretzel taste test, is guaranteed to knock you down a few.
Wegman’s Mini Pretzels, 2.97/5
It was here that the difference between a pleasant pretzel moment and a passable one became—as always, respectfully!!—abundantly clear. It was also here that I noticed that malt falls off ingredient lists (only the Snack Factory pretzels ranked below picks it back up again), a strong indicator that maltiness is a critical component of a great pretzel, and products that lack it are less likely to please. The butter aftertaste here was nice, but it was also distinctly artificial. The alkalinity was satisfying, but only once you’d had three or four pretzels. The salt was there, but it wasn’t enough or heartily textured. The yeast was—well, truthfully, one of our testers said these tasted alcoholic. Not…a bad thing? Just something almost certainly worth noting.
Utz Classic Thins, 2.88/5
These were dry enough that they were a challenge to chew and swallow, and, as Amanda so fittingly wrote: “I’m just now realizing that’s not what I want from my pretzels.” The dryness did allow for a level of crunch three-fifths of our testers enjoyed, but, to quote Amanda again, “it was a sad crunch.” Still, Allison and Genevieve both mentioned the salt crystals were the perfect size to satisfy their salt cravings.
Snack Factory Pretzel Chips, 2.79/5
I did throw this little curveball into the taste test thinking I’d end up in five different fights about what qualifies as a pretzel (and don’t worry—I did!), but what people struggled with here was the sweetness. Each and every person identified an immediate “honey-like” taste upon first bite, as well as a honeyed aftertaste that lingered. That sweetness overwhelmed just about any notice of saltiness or alkalinity. One of the tasters also said these were so sharp upon first bite she was worried “a corner would jut into the roof of my mouth??”
Brad’s Organic Mini Pretzels, 2.33/5
We love and appreciate Brad, but we can also, in good faith, have questions for him about his plain and disintegrating pretzels! For starters: How! Also: Why?
Our Testing Methodology
All taste tests are conducted with brands completely hidden and without discussion among tasters that could influence results. Tasters taste samples in random order. For example, taster A may taste sample 1 first, while taster B will taste sample 6 first. This is to prevent palate fatigue from unfairly giving any one sample an advantage. Tasters are asked to fill out tasting sheets ranking the samples for various criteria. All data is tabulated and results are calculated with no editorial input in order to give us the most impartial representation of actual results possible.
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